Like the canyon

What a weekend.  I can’t believe how antsy I feel.   Usually Sundays are spent in a happy, restful haze of exhaustion and satisfaction from a good week of effort and a solid Saturday run.  Yesterday was the first Saturday spent without significant physical activity in at least a year, last was probably the family trip to So Cal a year ago, and I can’t remember how long it has been that an easy Saturday didn’t occur on vacation.  I got out for a nice slow hike on Saturday, but wasn’t work by any means.   Some solid work in the yard took the edge off but has still left me with a weird combination of nervous energy and laziness.  Not really the taper I wanted going into my big race.

The culprit at the bottom of all of the inactivity is my knee/calf issue that flared up with a vengeance last Monday on my hard effort on Malan’s Peak.  I have noticed that my knee has been aching in direct proportion to the strain/pain I have in my calf.  The knee came first, which I’m sure led to a favored stride which led to the calf, which in turn affects my knee.  It was bad enough on Wednesday that when I attempted to trot with my 10 year old across the infield at his track meet (he’s making papa proud as a member of the Ogden City Track Club!) I couldn’t put two strides together without very sharp pain.  I went for a good ride on my road bike Tuesday and even that hurt my knee to push it hard. 

If you’d asked me Wednesday night, I would have said Squaw Peak was out.  Slowly things are feeling better.  I have made a self diagnosis that would make a witch doctor proud and come to the conclusion that my tight calf is pulling my lower leg slightly out of alignment (recent MCL strain from a ski injury has given me an abnormal degree of lateral movement ) and causing my knee to track poorly in the joint?? Like ITB knee issues but in the lower leg??   Deep, solid massage seems to take the edge off of both the knee and calf. 

Bottom line is it is frustrating that going into my focus race of the spring I may not make it to the starting line.  The only race I have really felt solid going into this year was Buffalo Run 50.  Red Hot was fresh off the ski injury; Ogden Marathon was run with this new calf strain.  I have an appointment with the Orthopedic on Thursday, if he says I’m not going to cripple myself by doing Squaw I think I’ll still give it a go, pain allowing.  

Got the all clear from the Orthopedic he said something like "well, you probably won't cripple yourself on Saturday" I took that as a go? Really, he said the knee isn't too big a concern, kinda is what it is, he thinks the sharp pain of late is due to the calf tighness and pain changing my stride and  puting more stress on the knee . . .who knows? The 2 ART therapy treatments on my calf seem to have loosened things up a bit. I went out thonight for the first runnning steps in almost two weeks, felt like crap as expected, took 15 minutes to remember how to run and that left me 10 minutes to cruise.  Got in a few strides and a little up and down.  Knee pain . . .on a scale of 1(mild) to 10 . . . 6 sometimes, 2 most of the time, 0 once in a while.  Anyway, I'm in! I'm going to start Saturday.  Maybe me and Oreo can tie our 2 bad legs together and finish in a good old fashion three legged race style on our 2 good ones.  No time predictions, too many health variables at this point.  I'm going to give it what I got, all I got, and hopefully beat my smoke'en fast 13:40 from last year . . .

I have a hard time being on time for races.  This one started at 5:00 AM and living in Ogden, I told myself I had to leave home at 3:15 to make sure to be there on time.  I left at 3:40.  I made it, barely.  Got my number, pinned it on, ran to the porta potty, ran to the start, before I could think, or catch my breath it was GO! I was running down the river path. 

I settled in with Ogden runners Tom Remkes and Matt Connors.  I think I have started every race this year chasing Tom.  We kept a good pace going on the pace path weaving in and out of runners, within a mile or so there weren’t too many in front and we had picked up another Ogden runner, Chad Carson.  All three of these guys are a lot stronger runners than I, first mistake was trying to keep up with them.

We started the climb and I felt horrible, I had first noticed how hard I seemed to be working on the river trail, and our pace wasn’t terribly fast.  My legs felt heavy and my heart rate was pinned.  I stayed with the local guys into Hope aid, and came in right at my planned split, but I felt terrible, couldn’t catch my breath, and couldn’t get my legs to work.  I slowed down here and tried to settle in, but nothing seemed to help.  Uphill grades that should have been easy felt impossible and steep stuff almost shut me down.  The good news was, my knee was holding up and had very little to no pain at this point. 

The suffer fest was torture though.  I felt like I hadn’t trained at all.  I started to seriously consider a DNF.  I couldn’t get my head around what was wrong, but there was no way I was up for 10-12 more hour of it.  I knew my buddy Nick (oreo) would have pacers at aid 6, the end of Hobble Creek road, and made up my mind that if I wasn’t feeling better, I would quit there and take one of their cars back to the start. (whimpy I know) I even came up with a good name for my failure, KneeNF. 

I hit mile 14, the top of the first big climbing section, with my heart rate still pinned and legs that felt like they were 100 pounds each.  My split was within 5 minutes of my plan, but there is no way my effort should have been this hard at that pace. I rolled over the top and tried to relax on the long downhill into Hobble Creek canyon. 

On the descent things started to come around.  My heart rate dropped a lot, my legs seemed to loosen up, my knee acted up, but I knew I could live with that.  I ate and drank a lot and just tried to cruise, not pushing, not holding back.  I came into the aid right on my split time and felt much better, I grabbed a drink and banana and kept cruising.  I knew the test would come on the paved uphill to aid 6.  I hit the pavement, expecting the heart rate to shoot up as it had, but it didn’t and my legs felt like them old selves, loose and much stronget than the morning climb.  I ran strong, and passed about 4 people.  I kept a good run going all the way up to aid 6 and hit the gate at 4:56.  I wanted to be there under 5.  I felt a 100% better, the KneeNF was out for sure. It was good to see the Froerer boys there waitning for Nick to come in.

I’m not sure what switch had clicked in my body, but I felt like it was all working the way it should be now.  The best way I could describe the horrible over worked feeling up to mile 14 is to use a term from my climbing days, flash pump!  I hadn’t run in two weeks truing to get my knee back to running shape and it just took time to get the blood flowing again.  

The rest of the race went as, or better than planned.  I ran 95%  of the dirt road from aid 6-7 and split it in 48 minutes, and ran most of the way to Little Valley aid.  Arriving at 6:40, about a 50 minute split.  I knew an hour between 6-7 and from 7-8 was a good pace fro me so I was happy with my effort.  I got passed only once from aid 6-9, and that was by the 1st place overall girl, who was motoring very strong!  I managed to pass about 5-6 people through this section. 

The weather was awesome, a little hot, but there always seemed to be a breeze to cool things off.  The long technical, muddy, snowy downhill from Windy Pass to the paved section was really tough on my knee and slowed me down a bit.  After what seemed like forever I came into aid 10, grabbed a cup of ice water and a cold towel (thanks aid station folks) and was out for the 3.5 (seems like 8)  miles down the pavement to the finish.  I kept a solid trot all the way down but was passed by the second place girl (again motoring fast) and another guy in the last ¼ mile. 

Finishing this race is awesome! There are always hoards of people cheering and John Bozung puts out the best post race eats out there.  I finished in 11:06 which was a huge course PR for me.  I was two hours and forty minutes faster over my time last year.  2 weeks ago I was hoping for a little faster time, but that course is TOUGH! I don’t know how much faster I could have realistically gone even if everything was 100%.  That’s three 50 mile races in the books (2^nd Squaw Peak, plus Buffalo run this year) I love that distance. Long enough that you can really settle in and enjoy it.  Overall a great day.  I had a blast hanging out at the finish with my family and friends who had raced.  I was great to cheer in all the runners, for some reason I wanted to stay at the finish until after my finish time last year, I couldn't believe I was out there for that much longer last year! geeze that was a long day.  Lookng forward to Logan Peak in a couple of weeks, hoping my knee will let me race.